I Sing the Body Electric

Dame Frances Ashcroft

Frances Ashcroft's beautiful, beguiling, fascinating book, The Spark of Life, shows how everything that happens in our bodies -- from muscle movement to cognition -- is powered by electric signals leaping from cell to cell, produced by chemical reactions instigated by processes inside the cells themselves. The movement of chemical molecules through ion channels, a form of molecular gateway in the membranes of all living cells from amoebae to blue whales, induces the discharge of voltage which causes changes in the cells themselves. When cells fire in proper sequence, the propagation of the electric wave through nerves and muscles causes, for example, an arm to reach, fingers to close, a hand to grasp.

Ashcroft, a research fellow at Oxford University in England, specializes in ATP-sensitive potassium channels as they relate to insulin secretion, type II diabetes, and neonatal diabetes. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2015.

Like many another scientist, when Dame Ashcroft approaches the topic of self and free will, she concludes that "Free will, like so much else, is merely an illusion." (page 283) Brilliant researcher she may be, but a philosopher she isn't. She fails to realize that her acceptance of the ontological reality of the world is as much an act of faith as is belief in the Buddha's incarnation. She states that "most scientists would now agree that consciousness emerges from the electrical activity of the brain". What she doesn't realize is that the self is beyond linguistics; it uses language merely as a tool for communication -- it 'emerges' as its ability to transfer ideas matures.

The difference between 'will' and 'thought' corresponds to the difference between doing and thinking. I can think about moving my arm all day long, but until I actively will my muscles to contract or relax, nothing happens. In fact, in some cases, thinking results in inferior results. When I type, if I consciously try to think about which keys to press, my typing slows almost to a standstill; it's only when muscle-memory takes over, and I don't think about it, that typing occurs. Will power, not thinking, is the hallmark of the individual.

Dame Ashcroft's book does nothing to examine more finely tuned questions such as how I can know other minds exist, and that they experience the world and themselves in the same way I do. The fact that the subjective experience of self might merely hinge on the correct sequence of firing of neurons in the brain says nothing about a sub-lingual self.

Further, Ashcroft's thesis assumes the existence of an external world. When you talk about the mind's place in the world, you presuppose both a mind and a world. Do our perceptions of the world in some way create that world, or is it that the world creates our perceptions? Are our perceptions contingent on the world, or is it the other way around? Is it possible to know things in a extra-linguistic way, in a way that language cannot express? What do we say when nothing can be said? How can sparks of bio-electricity be self-referencing? Does the mind arise from the scintillating brain or merely from its own invention, language? Is it possible to have knowledge that falls outside of language? Where does knowledge end and faith begin?

In developmental psychology, is the self created or is it unveiled? Does the learning of language create the mind, or does it merely supply a tool for the already existing mind to interact with the world? How can even neuroscience answer such a question?

Science can only make verifiable statements about the world; it cannot make value judgments. The scientific method can never be used to justify itself.